Collection information

Collection: Alfred Huhnhäuser papers

Collection Ref.: GB 0559 HU

Biographical history:

Dr Alfred Huhnhäuser (1885-1950), German civil servant and teacher. Educated in Berlin and Rostock where he began working as a teacher in 1914. Married Else Schulze in May 1913 and had two daughters Heidi (b 1914) and Inge (b 1917). Heidi married a Scotsman, Alexander Peden, in 1939 and spent the war in Scotland. Alfred took up a post as a Ministerialrat (ministerial secretary) with the Ministry of Education in Berlin in 1936 and in 1940 was sent to work at the Education Department in Oslo in occupied Norway. He remained in Norway after the war until 1948, when he was granted permission to join his daughter and son-in-law in Hull, England. In 1949 he and his wife returned to Germany, where he died in December 1950.

Contents:

Journal recording outbreak of First World War, 1914, and also containing stories and diaries kept by Alfred’s daughter Heidi Huhnhäuser, 1920s; detailed account of a spa holiday in Austria illustrated with postcards and photographs, 1940; Aus einem reichen Leben – notebooks containing Alfred Huhnhäuser’s memoirs up to 1928 (written between 1943-46); five chapters of a political memoir written by Alfred Huhnhäuser’s about his time in Norway during the war-time occupation; signed affidavits on behalf of Alfred Huhnhäuser from Norwegian citizens, 1946, and other official papers relating to Huhnhäuser’s entry to Britain in 1948; family correspondence, 1942-44 and 1949-50; family photograph album; anthology of German poetry collected by Alfred Huhnhäuser.

Extent: 4 boxes

Catalogue information

A detailed list of the contents of the collection is included in the thesis ‘Memoir and memory: the papers of a pre-war German – Alfred Huhnhäuser, 1885-1950’, Caroline Martin, University of Stirling, September 2000 (ref. THESIS 3665)

Additional collection information

Custodial history:

The collection was presented to the University of Stirling's German Department by Prof George Peden (whose uncle was married to Heidi Huhnhäuser, Alfred Huhnhäuser's daughter) and subsequently transferred to the University Archives.

Language: German (with a small amount of material in English, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish)

Further reading:

Martin, Caroline, ‘Memoir and memory: the papers of a pre-war German – Alfred Huhnhäuser, 1885-1950’, University of Stirling, September 2000 (ref. THESIS 3665)